Koloman Moser
Posted on 07/06/11.
Koloman Moser (1868-1918) was an Austrian artist who exerted considerable influence on twentieth-century graphic art and one of the foremost artists of the Vienna Secession movement and a co-founder of Wiener Werkstätte. Beyond his graphic work for books, postage stamps and magazines, his designs in architecture, furniture, jewelry, and textiles helped characterize the work of this era. Moser drew upon the clean lines and repetitive motifs of classical Greek and Roman art and architecture in reaction to the Baroque decadence of his turn-of-the-century Viennese surroundings. In 1901/02, he published a portfolio of elegant graphic designs for tapestries, fabrics, and wallpaper entitled Die Quelle (“The Source”). Along with Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann, Koloman was one of the designers for Austria’s leading art journal Ver Sacrum.
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Julius Klinger
Posted on 07/06/11.
Julius Klinger (1876-1942) was an Austrian painter, draftsman, illustrator, commercial graphic artist, typographer and writer. In 1895, he found his first employment with the Vienna fashion magazine Wiener Mode. Here he became acquainted with Koloman Moser, who would later be his teacher. In 1897 he relocated to Berlin, where he worked extensively as a commercial graphic artist until 1915. Together with the printing house Hollerbaum und Schmidt, he developed a new style of functional poster design that soon gained him international reputation. Beginning in 1918, Klinger designed a comprehensive and noted campaign promoting the “Tabu” company’s cigarette rolling paper, that was advertised all over Vienna in 1918/19. Klinger devised a promotional strategy, spanning from small newspaper ads to huge billboards.
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Tom Eckersley
Posted on 15/04/11.
Tom Eckersley (1914-97) was an English artist and one of the foremost poster designers and graphic communicators of the twentieth century. In addition to poster making and book illustration he also produced magazine covers and logos. His designs often employed an abstract like quality and collage to convey their message, marring simple text and imagery to relay complex messages in a direct way. There is one of Eckersley’s Transport for London posters in the Wolfsonian, Miami Beach, at the moment. The use of bold colours and simplified form ties in with other posters on show, but the use of Helvetica rather than Johnston Sans gives a more neutral European look to the work.
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New branding project
Posted on 16/02/11.
Buenos Aires based Rudi B. Sazunic has been trading vintage 78 records since 1957 and has the largest collection in South America. His name is well known internationally. Rudi came to us looking for a new brand that would not only reflect his unrivalled experience and professional service, but also that would reflect the visual style associated with his area of expertise; records from the 1930s. We were provided with a selection of records typical of his collection and an old Victrola gramophone to play them on to get into the spirit of the period. We based the logo on record label designs combined with the shape of the gramophone needle both of which are instantly recognisable by Rudi’s audience. There is also a subtle hint of a magnifying glass in the logo which suggests the ability to search the collection (which is of course possible on the new online store we also designed). The logotype and strap line are written in two variations of a condensed font which is a reworking of the original designed by Adolf Behrmann for the Berthold type foundry in 1928. The font is ideal for projecting the look and mood of the 1930s. The branding is clean and modern but gives a hint of the romance associated with vintage records.
Link: http://www.seventyeights.com/
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Design Box Invitation
Posted on 30/11/10.
We just got our first project for Design Box back from the printer. This invitation is a 16x12” poster printed on uncoated natural stock with two special inks, gold and fluorescent pink.
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Ludwig Hohlwein
Posted on 01/11/10.
Ludwig Hohlwein (1874 -1949) was a poster artist, graphic designer, architect and painter. He is counted alongside Lucian Bernhard, Ernst German-Dryden, Hans Rudi Erdt and Julius Klinger as one of the most prominent, and an influential representatives of the art of advertising. After studying in Munich and Dresden, and study tours to London and Paris he settled down in Munich as an architect. From 1904 Hohlwein regularly presented prints, watercolors and tempera paintings in the Munich Glass Palace. His signature style is easily recognisable and it varied little over his 40 year career. The drawing was perfect, his figures full of touches of color and a play of light and shade that brings them out of their background and gives them substance. He is said to have been inspired by the work of the British duo the Beggarstaffs who virtually created the modern poster, with clear outlines and large areas of flat colour.
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Armando Milani
Posted on 26/10/10.
Born in Milan 1940, Italian graphic designer Armando Milani studied with Albe Steiner at the Società Umanitaria. In 1970 he founded Milani Design studio with his younger brother Maurizio, and in 1977 moved to New York where, after a collaboration for two years with Massimo Vignelli he opened his own studio. He specialises in logos and branding but is best known for his simple but powerful poster designs.
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